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Mortal Kombat retains its share of secrets and the power to astonish, well past its 30th anniversary after its first appearance in arcades. The recent anthology including the franchise's earliest days, featuring four arcade games, multiple console adaptations, and related titles, is more than just a well-emulated collection of iconic titles along with lesser-known entries — it additionally serves as a comprehensive historical account about the making of the legendary series.

Even as a lifelong enthusiast of the series who has closely monitored its origins and transformation, there was plenty new for me to learn and appreciate about the series.

What Defines the Historical Compilation

Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection similar to other vintage game anthologies from the development team Digital Eclipse, part historical documentation, section playable historical record. This compilation features emulated versions of the original arcade Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, and Mortal Kombat 4, plus console and handheld ports of several of these titles. The anthology additionally contains the series' ventures at derivative games, like combat-focused releases Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat: Special Forces — among the series' most criticized releases.

The Legacy Kollection thus isn't a “best of” collection, but an examination of Mortal Kombat's early days, when developer Midway and series co-creators the creative duo behind the series were figuring out how to create a combat title, created from video recordings of actual people, through experimentation. Observing the archival material — that features archival footage, contemporary discussions, and reproductions of classic advertisements, illustrated stories, and including internal communications — it's astonishing to observe how the franchise evolved from humble beginnings to a worldwide phenomenon. It's frankly astounding to see a group of early video game creators, working with minimal planning or supervision, channel their pop-culture interests into creating a legendary video game series.

Documentary Portion

The historical documentation of Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection charts the rise of the fighting series and the founders' vocational paths at the now-defunct Midway. It then goes on to show how the very same individuals reckoned with how to regularly outdo their previous work, facing no small amount of pressure to repeat their success. It represents an intriguing historical record made from analog films and analog photographs and pencil sketches, which demonstrate the hands-on approach of the franchise's production method and how oral tradition helped circulate its mysteries and hidden aspects of Mortal Kombat in its arcade heyday. Told in bite-sized chunks, it's thoroughly enjoyable collection of mini-documentaries that includes titles, illustrated stories, cinematic adaptations and even the comical physical events. It also includes some never-implemented techniques and character sprites among its cutting-room-floor content.

Playable Component

Distributed throughout the five-part documentary's timeline are invitations to experience the actual titles. At certain intervals, viewers can hop into a combat game session or a home system version to reexperience its mechanics and graphics, simulated with remarkable precision on modern hardware.

I spent the bulk of my time playing the arcade classics, especially Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Many of the games here hold up, particularly during direct competitive sessions. Yet competing with the artificial intelligence fighters in these releases is a demonstration of how basic and unjust the coding existed in the series' initial installments. CPU-controlled opponents clearly employ dishonest tactics or are otherwise dumb as rocks. Without having someone to play against — online play is available in the majority of included games, but too light on features — the experience will be incomplete.

Technical Presentation

The 23 playable Mortal Kombat games in the compilation, a mix of coin-op, home system, and portable titles, are faithfully recreated, though I detected a few small quirks — mostly input lag and sporadic glitches, particularly in Mortal Kombat 4. Even though the releases are primarily displayed authentically, developer Digital Eclipse has incorporated various clever convenience enhancements and graphical adjustment settings. For example, players have the option to reveal combatant-unique actions on the display and choose to enable unlimited duration to perform a Fatality. There are also options for accessing hidden fighters, eliminating the need to execute obscure techniques to obtain them.

Visually, the games can be experienced with numerous filters and visual treatments. Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection offers very realistic effects that reproduce the cathode-ray tube displays of coin-op establishments or home televisions, or the limited color monitor of a Game Boy. An especially welcome feature is the option to have coin-op-inspired frames surrounding the screen, with the MK game of your choice accurately and softly reflecting against the simulated dark plastic edges. It's quite aesthetically pleasing.

Extra Content

Players will discover multiple welcome features besides the documentary and emulated arcade classics, including a music player that allows users to rediscover the music from multiple Mortal Kombat games excluding the sounds of combatants violently defeating each other. Additionally included are fighter biographies that contain backgrounds and numerous narrative components presented by the demo sequences of coin-op titles and final sequences.

Lost Media Recovery

Among the most significant features for committed franchise followers is the ability to access a piece of "lost media" in the guise of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 Wavenet Edition. This version of the game, a moderately improved edition of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, was an initial venture by the company at head-to-head network battles in gaming halls. The Wavenet Edition of the game is virtually identical to UMK3, but featured the capability to challenge online opponents and contained several small bug fixes and balance. But the Wavenet update never gained traction, in part